The Engine of US Jobs

eberta writes, "BusinessWeek has an interesting take on the US job situation, What's Really Propping Up The Economy. I think many of us have felt the US tech job market was stagnant and this article has insights into why this economy is so hot, yet not from our perspective. The spoiler is the business of health care — which will come as no surprise to anybody who has looked through the help wanted section lately. BusinessWeek has some opinions on how IT should play a bigger role in the health care industry."

Comments

What's Really ...

[Andy Gardner]

Public subsidies through the Pentagon system.

Re:Questionable basis

[cmorriss]

one is only listed as unemployed in the US, when one is drawing unemployment benefits.

This is often stated as the way the unemployment rate is determined, but it is completely wrong.

The method by which the U.S. goverment determines the unemployment rate is far more accurate than that. They do a survey every month of 60,000 households collecting various data including employment status. It's really quite detailed and the methodology seems to be pretty good.

What keeps US economy running

[Opportunist]

Easy. Why do you think the US is one of the proponents of IP and copyright? Because that's all that's left in its industry: Content.

Agriculture is heavily subsidized. As in many/almost all "western" countries. In other words, a lossy business for the state. It's kept running to remain at least in a moderate way able to sustain itself, just in case the world starts treating them like, say, Cuba and shuts down international trade (or in case some country/ies decide it's fun to sink ships going for US harbors). It's a war insurance, if you want. And many other countries do exactly the same.

Productive industry is pretty much in the same boat. From cars to consumer products, everything is manufactured abroad. The only hardware still going strong is military hardware, and there the government is even the main (and often only) customer, not something where they would EARN money. They're spending.

So what remains as the generator of tax is service and content. Now, service is pretty hard to export. You can only export it by getting people from abroad to your country. While it is a generator of tax, it largely only creates domestic tax. Tourists from outside the US become fewer and fewer (and, honestly, I can't blame anyone who doesn't want to dare going to the US).

So what remains as the bringer of foreign money (besides the biggest bringer, the ability to "tax" internationally by having the foreign trade currency at your pressing fingertips, the USD) and balances the foreign trade at least to some degree is content, patents and copyright.

Health care is certainly a big tax bringer of the future, but this most certainly only creates domestic tax and does not generate a single cent of foreign money pouring into the country.